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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24376237">Creativity</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalmSpirited/pseuds/CalmSpirited'>CalmSpirited</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dead by Daylight (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>owo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 01:03:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,117</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24376237</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalmSpirited/pseuds/CalmSpirited</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ya boi Arcus is having some issues</p><p>Did this for the 100k contest for DBD. Got an honorable mention but didn't win- so I finally share it with y'all!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Creativity</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ice clinks sharply against old fashioned glass that still holds its fine glimmer in the firelight despite how much whiskey’s been poured into it over the years. A deep sigh comes from the figure in the chair, and the glass is put down on the table next to him.</p><p><em> Arcus is bored. </em> Trapped in this hellhole, he’s used to boredom, but a glass of whiskey or two was enough to placate him until he went to sleep and woke up with a new idea to try, or a new memory to view. But as of late, not even whiskey can help him chase away his boredom. He’s even moved on to harder stuff: bourbon, strong wine, the hardest vodka from the coldest of Russias across the Terra Worlds- but none of it is helping. He finishes his fourth <em> (fifth? sixth?) </em>glass of hard cider, his new concoction for tonight, but he’s still bored and gets to his feet-</p><p>And nearly falls on his face. Apparently, he’s had a bit <em> too </em> much to drink <em> . </em>His heel somehow hits the table next to his chair, and the sound of ice clinking against glass makes his eardrums throb painfully. One of his arms grips a bronze Roman-styled statue of a woman to his left in… less than appropriate areas, but doesn’t realize it as he sways in place, blood rushing to his head as he fights to maintain balance.</p><p>It was a hard-fought battle, but he stood upright as the clear victor. Letting out a small burp in celebration, Arcus took a few uneasy steps forward towards a very brightly-colored painting that was hurting his eyes, so he reached up and grabbed it with both hands and tugging downward he ripped the string that was hanging it up on the wall off, making it float unnoticed to the floor. The painting was dropped to the floor unceremoniously, the sound of the wooden frame of the offending painting cracking and splintering in a few places, but Arcus cared not for it.</p><p>Next on his hit list was a small bronze state of a ferocious lion’s head sitting on top of the giant fireplace that was hard to see in the dark light, but even with his vision swimming from all the alcohol he had consumed, Arcus still reached out for it and grasped it in his right hand. Picking it up proved to be a little bit more difficult than he had planned as it was heavy and its weight proportioned unevenly, but after glaring at it drunkenly for a moment, he took a step back and tossed it in the fire.</p><p>As he watched the flames lick around the metal, unable to burn it but the sharp edges of the lion’s face beginning to soften in the flames, Arcus felt his rage rise. What is the point of all this stuff if he’s never going to leave? Why is he here? He isn’t a bad person; he’s been a good son, husband, father, grandfather even- so why is he doomed to be stuck here forever? What has he done that is so <em> horrible, absolutely unforgivable </em> that he must be punished so severely?</p><p>The only comforting thought is that maybe another one of his infinite selves is not trapped here, enjoying life with his family and friends back on his homeworld. But he’s too drunk to let the thought comfort him, so he lashes out again. This time it’s a small medallion from a dark Terra world given to someone who's been here for a reason he can’t remember that is the target of his ire, but it goes into the fire just like the lion. The ribbon of the medallion burns pretty quickly, but the metal only begins to melt around the edges.</p><p>He wants it to <em> burn </em> , but it doesn’t. He wants <em> everything </em> to burn because it’s all <em> useless </em>unless he can find a way to escape the Entity’s clutches.</p><p>Missing pretty specaturaly, Arcus still manages to kick the base of the fireplace in anger, yelling out in pain and frustration as he grasps his now throbbing foot. He stumbles again, his balance boggled by all the alcohol he had consumed that evening, and he ends up banging his nose on the large statue in between two of his largest bookshelves within the Archives. Letting go of his foot in favor of cradling his hurt nose, he looks up angrily at the statue that <em> dared </em>to injure him.</p><p>It’s actually technically <em> statues </em> since it’s two people on one large base, but he recognizes it as the Holy Twins from the Realm of Oslova, a fascinating Terra world with a little bit of Light in the only advanced civilization on their world amidst so much Darkness- he dimly acknowledges that he went there on a vacation once and it was quite spectacular during their Festival of the Three Moons- he tries to push the statue over, despite it being thousands upon thousands of pounds heavier than him, and only ends up with him slipping and flopping to the floor in a drunken heap.</p><p>His failure only infuriates him more, but he wisely decides that the statue may live for now, instead turning his sights on smaller, more readily available things surrounding him. A picture hanging randomly on the wall bites the dust next, a beautiful scenery of a vast oasis in an otherwise barren desert, is thrown to the ground before being trampled on by Arcus and then kicked into the fire, and delights as the flames lick away at the canvas. A beautiful necklace crafted from the finest diamonds and jewels that Terra Septima has to offer lands on top of the painting, and Arcus hears the silk string holding it together go <em> pop! </em>as it begins to snap.</p><p>A beautiful Tiffany lamp is tossed in next, then several Tomes he had been compiling are fed to the flames, then one of the more technologically advanced phones, and then Arcus, in a haze of anger, screams in frustration and throws the entire bottle of hard vodka he had been drinking into the fire-</p><p>Forgetting that vodka was extremely combustible, the fireplace flames suddenly lashed out, knocking him down in a wave of heat that disoriented him severely for a few moments as he desperately tried to regain his senses. His nose is aching something fierce now and he’s suddenly a little bit more sober than he was a few moments ago as the gravity of what he just did fell upon him. By the Ancient Ones, he could’ve blown himself up right then! Is he really <em> that </em>drunk to do such a thing-? </p><p>Picking his head up, the brightness of the flames assaults his eyes, and he lowers his head back down to the floor with a groan of pain. He somehow ends up face-down with his nose pressing hard into the wooden floor, and Arcus finds it much better on his face to roll over to his side and inhale the overwhelming stench of burning alcohol as it fills the air. But his anger is not completely gone and Arcus finds it only inflating more as he dares to give the fireplace another look.</p><p>Something catches his eye. There is fire, but not in the fireplace, about 10 meters away from him on the floor. In a panic, Arcus gets up on his hands and knees and crawls over to the small flame licking at the edge of something and Arcus stamps it out with the end tails of his shirt when he can find nothing else to put it out with. Thank goodness it was just a small flame, nothing bigger than what you would see on the end of a match or candle, or else he may not have been sober enough to put it out-</p><p>His relief is short lived when he realizes what it actually was that was on fire, one of the very few, <em> real </em>things he has in this place: the picture of him, his wife, and their two sons when they were younger and questionably happier. It’s folded up into a size he could carry in his pocket, obscuring the faces on the picture, but he doesn’t have to see their faces because he can just tell by looking at it what it was. With panic swelling in his chest, he quickly picks up the photo and unfolds it to inspect the damage, and breathes out a heavy sigh when it’s only the edges that had been scorched and their faces had been untouched.</p><p>Arcus runs his fingers over the faces as he’s startled to find that it takes him half a second to remember their names. It’s half a second too long for him.</p><p><em> His boys, they were so young then! </em> Arcus feels wetness run down his cheek, and he finds his drunken anger being replaced with drunken tears as he continues staring at the picture. His wife, Zasha… oh, how she had only gotten more beautiful as she had aged! She didn’t believe him at first when he had told her so, but he had been persistent to the point where she had told him that he was acting like they were young lovers again.</p><p>He doesn’t remember, but somehow he had backed up into the front of his chair, too drunk and upset to get into it as the tears kept flowing down his face the longer he stared at the picture of his family, memories of good times soothing him into a drunken sleep filled with even more good memories. He doesn’t want to wake up.</p><p><em> But he does </em>, an unspecified amount of time later, with a pounding headache, a throbbing nose and a horrible kink in his back from sleeping slumped up against the front of his chair, hands still clutching the photo of his family smiling brightly at him.</p><p>In equal amounts of pain and sobriety, Arcus is reminded that he’s no spring chicken anymore as it takes him a while of rolling around on the floor for his spine to pop back in place and to climb up into his chair. Letting his head thump against the back of his chair to gather his senses, Arcus finally realizes with a painful sniff that the smell of copper he’s been smelling is actually coming from his nose which had been bleeding during the night and had stained a few buttons on his shirt.</p><p>Getting rid of the blood on him with a wave of his hand, Arcus finds himself clean in the blink of an eye and in desperate need of a drink to drown out the intrusive thoughts creeping into his head. Almost instinctively, he summons a glass of ice-cubed whiskey in his left hand and brings it to his lips to drink-</p><p>But then he notices just the tiniest bit of blood on the photo still in his hand, around his family’s feet. He stops, the glass just hovering inches away from his lips and has a moment of <em> clarity. He’s becoming a drunkard. </em>Looking around the room and eyes landing on the fireplace, Arcus suddenly fully realizes what he’s done. He’s burned things that he made with his own mind like they were trash. Unwanted garbage that needed to be disposed of- and even though he doesn’t want to admit it, the same thing almost happened with the picture of his family.</p><p>His family isn’t <em> garbage. </em> But <em> he </em>is, certainly feels like it. The glass disappears instantly and Arcus stares at the fireplace blankly. Some people get hooked onto Blight and become Blight Junkies, others cope with decadent pleasures or mind-numbing, superhuman drugs that eventually turn you into brain-dead zombies or worse- he, apparently, copes with alcohol.</p><p><em> Well, </em> Arcus laughs hoarsely to himself, <em> enough is enough. </em> He’ll have to find other, more <em> healthier </em>ways to cope. For a moment, he thinks to himself, then he waves his hand and summons a large table in front of him, piled with Legos. Legos weren’t really a thing on his home Terra World, but his sons saw a set in a catalog one time and talked about it for weeks until he got them both a set to play with for one of their birthdays. They demanded he’d play with them until he got cramps from being on the floor for so long. It had actually been quite fun until he stepped on one.</p><p><em> For the love of all that is Light in the Omniverse, do not step on one. </em>It was a good incentive to stay sober so he didn’t drunkenly step on a pile of them. Now, what to build is the question… </p><p> </p>
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